


The Assasin's Handbook Job

by foolishnotions



Category: Leverage, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Heist Story, inspired by a real thing, publishing shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-01-04 14:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishnotions/pseuds/foolishnotions
Summary: Much as he's unwilling to admit it, Clint Barton has found a problem he can't solve with arrows.  To deal with it, he's chosen to seek outside help.





	1. Can't solve this with arrows

**Author's Note:**

> So much love goes to Pohadka for this one, for insisting I write it, doing the beta, and for helping me with the title.

The client was already seated when Eliot came out to the brew pub’s dining room. The restaurant was closed by this hour—that was part of why he'd chosen to meet this client so late at night— but somehow, he was already turning a beer in his hands. Eliot pursed his lips but didn't say anything just yet. He grabbed a beer of his own on the way across to the client’s table, where he sat down across from the client, who finally looked up with a sheepish smile on his face. 

“I uhm, didn't want to wait outside in the rain,” he said once Eliot was settled down. “So, I let myself in. Sorry.” The client’s hair was still wet, so clearly, he’d tried waiting before testing the brew pub’s resistance to break-ins. 

Eliot took a sip of his beer without trying to hide his annoyance. 

“Really, Barton, you needed to do that,” he asked, bringing his fingers up to his forehead in a ‘V’ shape, tapping it. 

The client shrugged. 

“Yeah, stupid. I know,” he said finally. "Your partner that lives here though, the blond? Said it was okay when I told her what I was doing here though so I guess that counts as being invited.” 

It did not, and Eliot had not missed Clint Barton logic at all. 

“That’s not…” Eliot began to grumble before stopping and sighing. He straightened up again and started to sign instead. “Never mind how you got in, what’s the job?" 

Clint brightened. 

“You see,” he began. “Ever since I got out of the uh, business you and I were in—” 

“You’re not out of any business you used to be in,” Eliot interrupted. 

“Okay, so I took a second job,” corrected Clint, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Anyway, my point is I have this apartment building and one of my tenants, he’s got a book coming out. Good book, if you’re into that weird fake historical stuff with robots in it.” 

Eliot was not, and he suspected that what Clint was actually into was the author, but said neither of these things, and just urged him to get on with his explanation. 

“Well this publisher that picked up the book, mostly good people doing their best to put out books by newish authors. But they got bought about a month ago by this other group, who have another book.” 

At this point, Clint pushed some papers across the table so Eliot could look at them. Two book covers that could have been identical, except for some colour and typeface variations. Each showed a pile of silver scrap metal and sparking wires wrapped up in a haze of red, all set against a black background. The only obvious discrepancy was the shape of the red haze, one of which bent away from the scrap metal in the shape of a star. The other was shaped to suggest a posing nude female silhouette, with the scrap metal positioned such that it replaced parts of the red shape. The other discrepancy had to do with the authors’ names, neither of which Eliot recognised. However, the way Clint tapped the cover with the naked lady silhouette, led him to believe that that was the fake. He took a look at the name on the original cover. J. B. Winter. As obvious pen names went, it was a good one. 

“You’re saying they copied his book,” Eliot guessed. 

“I’m saying they copied everything but his book, hyping my tenant’s book and then putting this crap on all the websites.” Clint shrugged, “I don’t know, exactly. If nobody’s getting shot at or falling out of windows, it isn’t exactly my wheelhouse. But I’m guessing they’re pulling a switcheroo. Market my tenant’s book, but sell this one instead, make a fortune,” Clint explained. He took another sip of his beer. 

Eliot frowned. 

“Pretty awful, stealing from a first-time author like that, but why do you want my help?” 

“Aw, Eliot! You haven’t even let me get to the dig yet,” Clint persisted. “The best part about this shit show is that nobody’s sure if this book even exists. Nobody’s read it, not even those little bits they send to people to hype the book.” 

“That’s still not a reason I should help you,” Eliot said finally, his expression turning suspicious. Clint didn’t respond right away. His mouth opened, and shut, and opened again before he finally worked out what he was going to say. 

“Listen, I would love to take care of this myself and just knock on my tenant’s door on release day with a case of beer to celebrate however many first-day book sales he has. That would delight me, but the people who gave him a chance have gone and decided to steal this thunder and possibly also his actual book and that’s a little outside of the kinds of jobs I’m supposed to…” 

Clint let himself trail off, apparently unwilling to discuss his day job. 

Eliot had no such compunction. 

“So, you're saying there really is such a thing as a job that's beneath the Avengers?” 

Clint spluttered for a moment. Eliot waited. 

“I’m saying, and I don’t want you to spread this around or anything, that this is a problem that a well-placed putty arrow isn’t going to fix. I mean except maybe for incapacitating the arsehole behind this’ keyboard. But that’s more about funny than actually helpful and…” 

Eliot gathered his fingers together in front of his lips and spread them out again as he pulled them away from his face, revealing an irritated expression. When Clint continued carrying on, he did it again. 

That did it. Clint stopped talking abruptly. 

“I take your meaning,” Eliot said when Clint finally did as instructed and shut up. “I don’t know, Barton. I’ll… think it over.” 

He tried to ignore the way Clint seemed to deflate when he said that. He did not ignore the way his old colleague’s jaw set a moment later when he pushed himself up from the table. Eliot stopped him. 

“Okay, okay. I’ll talk to my team,” he said abruptly, signing more emphatically than was perhaps called for. “Just, don’t go and do it yourself.” 

Clint nodded and turned to the door. 

Eliot grumbled a little and pretended not to notice Clint’s smug smile as he walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two signs I've used in this work are 'stupid' (http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/stupid.htm), and 'shut up' (http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/shut-up.htm), according to Lifeprint.com.


	2. Steal a Novel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It'll be an easy job, right?

Hardison had already started preparing for the briefing when Eliot returned to the apartment above the restaurant, arms laden with a pile of finger foods and a bunch of drinks.  The screens showed a triptych of their current run of awful, including the book covers, a bunch of financial information detailing the sale of the author’s publisher to the new parent company.  The other third of the screens showed a surveillance-style photo of Clint, apparently taken outside an apartment building somewhere in New York. Hardison’s jaw set when Eliot entered the room and set down the food.  This was another associate that Eliot had neglected to mention to his family.

He nodded to Hardison, hoping they’d be able to deal with that later.

“Anyway as I was saying, it looks like this isn’t the first time they’ve gone and done this kind of literary shenanigans…”

Hardison carried on explaining about the firm, which only had offices in New York, because of course it did and how it owned about a dozen bestsellers in a dozen genres, all of which seemed to come out of nowhere. One of the screens flashed with a handful of covers.

“Now I don’t know about any of you, but if I were to own a publisher, I'd sell a book once in a while,” Hardison said finally said as book sales figures appeared beneath each of the book covers.

“That’s still a lot of books,” Parker commented, her brow furrowing.

“Yeah it is,” Hardison answered, picking up his tempo a little.  “Especially for a book you can’t buy anywhere. I’ve checked them all, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Indigo, and a ton of little bookstores.  No one’s got these.”

Hardison stopped talking for a moment, leaving Eliot and Parker to read the screens.

“I don’t get it,” Parker said finally.  “How are they making any money off of any of this?”  Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed while she waited for Hardison to continue.

“Ah, you see, I thought the same thing, you know.  ‘These guys are so stupid they deserve to get caught,’ and I was gonna just let the Feds or whoever deal with them, but then I saw this,” he pushed a button on his keyboard and Barton’s face disappeared on the left-side of the screen setup, revealing a series of movie posters, for films Eliot had never heard of, each corresponding approximately to a book cover.

“They don’t want the books,” Parker finally said when the last cover went up.

“A-ha,” Hardison responded, waving the remote in her direction.  “Funny, how they went and bigfooted our man Winter’s book when it was almost ready to go, a first-time author like that with some buzz already going.”

“Okay fine,” Eliot said finally, still struggling to follow the slides on Hardison’s display, though he was never going to admit it.  “They what, want to buy a book to sell a movie? There can’t be money in that.”

Both Parker and Hardison stopped dead and stared at Eliot, who shrugged sheepishly.  This was likely to be more explaining he’d have to do later.

“I dated someone in publishing, once. None of this makes sense,” more silence followed Eliot’s admission.

Finally, Parker spoke.

“Ok, forget what they’re trying to accomplish right now, I want to know more about the people who are operating this scam,” she reached for Hardison’s remote, but he tugged just out of her reach, just in time to change the screens himself.  Another triptych filled the display, this time of a series of men, the photos taken apparently from their social media accounts for two of them, and surveillance footage from the third.

So, F&Y Books used to be run by this guy,”  Hardison zoomed in on the man on the left. He was fiftyish, pictured in jeans and a tweed jacket with longish graying hair.  Somebody had clearly not told him that publishers and English professors weren’t the same people. 

“Nice guy, cheerful.  Popular with his staff, popular with his authors.  Generous with his Christmas bonuses when he could be—

“Great, so you want us to take down College Santa,” Parker interrupted.  “Not okay.”

“Except,” Hardison continued, talking just that little bit louder to indicate that he wasn’t finished.  “College Santa isn’t running the show anymore.”

The screens shifted with a shuffling of cards and a second picture emerged.  Another man, this one in a an ironic t-shirt and an expensive but sloppy haircut appeared in front of the tweed-covered fellow.  “This guy, Greg Staunton, acquired the business last year. His prior achievements include federal prison for extortion.”

Hardison went on to explain Staunton’s doxxing-for-extortion scheme in detail, throwing up cached webpages on the screens.  Parker fidgeted next to him. When Hardison didn’t appear to be planning to pause anytime soon, she jumped in.

“So he’s already been caught once before,” she said, looking up from the cat’s cradle she’d been weaving and undoing throughout the briefing.  “this changes a lot of things. He’s going to be smarter this time. More careful.”

“If we're going to go after a guy like that, we'd better know exactly how he got caught before." 

“I’m thinking might be our in,” Hardison speculated, interrupting his presentation before Parker could get too far down her line of thought.  “I mean, he thinks he’s so smart right. Too smart to get busted the same way twice?”

Parker looked thoughtful.  Eliot looked suspicious as another image, this one of a Staunton at a podium, posing with a trophy of some kind, gesturing at it in an alarming fashion.

“So,” Parker said finally, “what makes a guy go from publishing people’s home addresses to publishing novels?” 

Hardison flipped the image again.  Same trophy, different year. Different body language.

“Credibility,” Eliot finally said, pointing at the image, gesturing for Hardison to put it up next to the one before it.  “Look at him one year to the next, where he’s changed his posture, tried to make his bad boy charm look professional and competent.”  Hardison and Parker stared at him a moment.

“It’s a very distinctive posture.”

The room was quiet for a moment, as the three of them exchanged looks.

“If we take this case,” Parker said, breaking the silence just before it got weird. “You need to understand that the client is this author.  Not your friend.” 

“Y’all, I’m going to need to know more about this author.  And your friend. The friend you didn’t feel the need to tell us about.  The Avenger friend…” with the spell broken, Hardison had begun to voice his various concerns, some of them founded, some of them, not so much. However, Parker’s lips were starting to curve up, just a little.  Just enough.

They were going to steal a novel. Maybe two.


End file.
